SWAT: Is America Coming Under Martial Law, Redux

Like most of us I have been watching the developments in the aftermath of the Boston Marathon tragedy throughout the week. Because I’m retired I probably logged more hours of viewing it on TV than most people who are younger. The initial bombings on Monday and their aftermath made me terribly sad at the loss of innocent lives and the maiming of so many, which will have future pain and consequences for the entire lives of the victims. As a father and grandfather how could I not feel painful tears for the death of an 8 year old and the lifelong pain of his parents? Yet beyond that sadness, I also felt a sense of anxiety in my chest as I listened to the hour upon hour of cable news coverage and the analysis of “terrorism experts” aligned with prognosticators telling us what it all means.

My anxiety did not stem from fear of terrorism, because that fear is irrational. This is so not because terrorism is a chimera, but because this type of terrorism is an all too real fact of the lives of humanity and indeed while we in America have suffered it, so has the rest of the world to an even greater degree. Great Britain, Spain, Iraq, Israel, India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia etc. and so on and so forth. Life itself is always uncertain and unseen death lurks as a constant possibility for even the most protected of us. This has always been the human condition and the truth is that as the eons of human history have passed we are far safer now than our ancestors ever were. Yet it is also a human necessity to maintain the illusion of our own safety and indeed immortality. When horrors like the Boston Marathon bombings occur it tends to shake up our human illusions and engender fear. In the aftermath of these horrors though come the “explainers” whose attempts to soothe us only increase the fears. Following the “explainers” come those who would exploit the aroused fears for their personal gain or predilection. This happened in America from 9/11 and in its wake the false meme “This Changes Everything” was transformed into a reality of war, torture and the shredding of our Constitution. My anxiety was raised because as I watch this all unfold on TV I became fearful of how this new attention arousing horror would be used by those intent upon transforming this country into a Police State under the guise of saving it from terror.

There had been speculation throughout the day that this “Exception” would be invoked, indeed the “estimable” Senator Lindsay Graham has called on the President to invoke this “exception” and now after the successful capture we get confirmation that the Administration would do just that and this information is relayed by a U.S. Attorney who has exhibited the tendency to use the power of the office to harass at least one person into suicide.

After the death of the older brother in the shootout in the middle of night and the escape of the younger brother initiating the massed manhunt, the entire City of Boston was in effect shut down. Maybe I’m too blasé in attitude but this seemed to be an extraordinary measure. Even in the direct aftermath of 9/11 only Lower Manhattan below 42nd Street was shut down and that was due to the chaos and disruption in the aftermath of the collapse of the World Trade Center disrupting the subways and other New York City services. In this case the citizens of an entire large City were ordered to remain indoors indefinitely. Now I can understand this precaution taken in the Watertown area alone, but all of Boston seems excessive. It essentially held an entire City hostage to the whims of one admittedly dangerous 19 year old, where all the evidence would lead one to presume was on foot, since LEO’s quickly discovered the abandoned, hijacked Mercedes he drove through a police barricade to escape. I found this troubling.

It was ironic in the end, that the suspect was eventually located as a direct result of the “shutdown” being lifted, by a man who came out of his house, noticed blood on the tarp of his boat and peeked in to see the suspect covered in blood. Also troubling to me was that once the suspect had been located it seemed like every sort of LEO from the area drove down congesting the streets with an abundance of vehicles, armored cars, ambulances and trucks of various kinds. Actually an hour into the siege I saw three Federal Government, Black SUV’s pull up into the crowd of vehicles and LEO’s and these were presumably the FBI arriving on the scene. Actually, the Agencies represented there were beyond count. There were at least the Watertown PD, the Boston PD, the FBI, and the DEA (why?), the ATF, the Massachusetts State Troopers, the National Guard (why?) and who knows who else. The show of force to capture one cornered and bloody young man was extraordinary and I think far out of proportion to the mission at hand. Indeed it seemed that many officers came down to feel like they had gotten into the action, rather than out of need. That this terrorist was captured alive is indeed salutary, but the show of force seemed out of place and will no doubt serve as a model for future situations. This indeed seemed to be the “Martial Law” that I discussed in my blog linked above.

Please understand I’m not implying that the capture of the suspect and the solving of this act of terror, at least of the immediate perpetrators wasn’t a good bit of work by law enforcement, because it was. Yet if you think about it, as with most stupidly committed crimes a good deal of the work done was not trailblazing a new path, but actually using long established law enforcement methods updated by our digital age. The cameras that captured the original pictures belonged to Lord and Taylor, not the City of Boston. The video of the two men that was played over and over was a direct analogy to something that we’ve used in this country for hundreds of years, the wanted poster. While it might come out that the video of the perpetrators initiated leads as to the men’s identities from friends and acquaintances, it was the killing of the MIT policeman that focused the attention of the area where the bombers were confronted. Finally, even though a supposed perimeter had been established that cornered the younger brother, he was as admitted by the police holed up in a boat one block outside that perimeter and only discovered by a private citizen. This was good police work, but not astounding police work and yet the hagiography has already begun about this case and precedent will be established based upon it. I am glad for the capture, interested in discovering the reasons for this terrible act, but depressed that it may represent a further step towards a police state in America, under possibly martial law. What do you think?

113 Responses

Mike,
I don’t have a problem with the shut down of the city. This was a dangerous guy and the public was at risk while he was on the loose. That being said, when I saw and heard Ms. Ortiz’ name, the hair on the back of my neck went up. If she is involved, I am nervous. The public safety exception is an abomination. First of all, this young man is a US citizen. That used to mean something, but somehow the DOJ thinks they can take away his rights by waving the magic public safety exception. Crazy.

Of course the powerful in government don’t like the fact that he has the right to remain silent. Yet (the “exception” notwithstanding) he is an American citizen in the United States and has that right.

The “exception” reminds me of Ben Frankin. “He who gives up freedom for safety deserves neither.”

Directly what worried me about this case; just because something went “boom” does not mean a whole city should cower behind locked doors while every LEO within range goes through the streets as if it is downtown Beirut. I worry about the terror label being able to invoke this response to any crime.

Just a quirk…and perhaps a quibble…precisely why are military camouflage
outfits an advantage in urban environments?

One note: Uniformed soldiers were present in the “embedded” media coverage along with patrols that noted “military police” on their bullet proof vests. One can only speculate that this is the initial steps to placing soldiers as normative “security” forces to patrol streets in the future. The soldiers in the media coverage were unarmed…so it must be the sight of uniforms that was being “strategically” acclimatized into the public view. The sense that these things are so carefully plotted is as real as anything else that speaks to a discriminatory attitude and intentionality against the constitutional securities in favor of force and general militarization becoming the overriding norm.

“The Pentagon’s bomb squad formally predicted the threat last year: improvised explosive devices of the sort seen in Iraq and Afghanistan would come to American cities. “In the event of an IED-related domestic incident,” the squad, known as JIEDDO, further anticipated in its five-year strategic plan, “the lead federal agency will require DoD [Department of Defense] support.”

As it turns out, not really. Assuming investigators are correct that the Boston Marathon bombs were jury-rigged together, the Marathon attack on Monday represents the first major domestic homemade bomb attack of the post-9/11 era. But first responders, cops and federal law enforcement didn’t call on any significant Defense Department aid. It’s an encouraging sign amidst a depressing week.

Air Force Lt. Col. Tom Crosson, a Pentagon spokesman, provides the tally of U.S. military support for the aftermath of the bombing. The one unambiguous Defense Department element? A team of three Navy explosive-ordnance disposal technicians who drove from Naval Station Newport to assist on Monday night with clearing suspicious packages. Turned out the packages weren’t bombs, so the Navy team wasn’t needed the next day.

Approximately 1000 Massachusetts National Guardsmen were on hand in Boston, including two teams designed to detect unconventional weapons, called Weapons of Mass Destruction Civil Support Teams. Most of them were deployed before the bombs went off, to secure the Marathon site. But at no point were the Guardsmen federalized: they were always under the control of Deval Patrick, the governor of Massachusetts. According to Crosson, as of this morning, about 850 Guardsmen remain on-hand in Boston.

I’m still absorbing the man hunt. As I contemplated the house to house search and the thoroughness of same I thought about people I know locally who have things in their homes they would not want the government to see. Things like exoctic plants for personal use in their basement or guns not on any approved list in their collection, etc. I also contemplated how all this recent discussion about government tyranny and the need to have firearms to protect against over-reach by the government was so easily circumvented by the manhunt.

I’m still absorbing the ease in which the hunt was organized and conducted. If you didn’t answer your door when the police knocked and announced their presence, they entered by “other means”. Fully armed and armored men at your door backed up by armored vehicles and troops outside … chilling.

The right to an attorney shouldn’t be dependent on being given the Miranda warning. I hope the suspect just keeps asking for one and says nothing else. I understand the desire to know everything about the suspect, his motives, etc. but I’m more concerned about his (and my) rights being protected.

I have been stating this sense I have been on this blog. I told people that ‘international terrorism’ doesn’t exist due to the fact that we sell weapons to every country in the world (I thought that it was odd that we were at an undeclared war or conflict with certain countries while at the same time competing against those countries in the olympic games…dating back during Hitler’s reign in Germany).

I will state this again: the greatest fear the Elites have is the ‘bewildred masses’ (us). We have the power to change country if we united. The Elites have been prevented us from uniting. So divided, we remain conqurered.

Anyway, I did fine a conflicting story with the FBI’s video cameras: the explosions came from inside the gate/barricades that were preventing the crowd from interfering with the Boston Runners. However, the FBI’s video cameras. show the ‘package/bomb’ being outside

I wouldn’t put anything past some in DC to cover up the facts of the story below.

And instead of the Facts of the story below being the major news cycle of the week most eyes are diverted to the 2nd Amd & Boston.

**

The report is an indictment not only of President Bush who is responsible for the torture program but President Obama who promised CIA officials that they would not be investigated or prosecuted for torture.

** Anyway, I did fine a conflicting story with the FBI’s video cameras: the explosions came from inside the gate/barricades that were preventing the crowd from interfering with the Boston Runners. However, the FBI’s video cameras. show the ‘package/bomb’ being outside **

I remember seeing what you’re speaking of.

Earlier this week there was one or more pictures showing the (Craft/Navy Seal?) guy with what looked like an outline of a possible pressure cooker in his backpack.

Going back looking for that picture/pictures I don’t see it now but it was in this group of pictures below.

The police state must justify the cost of its increasingly large presence. They all needed to show up to have their departments shown as being necessary to a favorable outcome. It’s no different from the military or education industrial complexes; they need more and more to better do thier jobs, regardless of the true societal cost of those rights crushing and tax burdensome complexes.

When the Clintons, the Bush family , the Obama/Holder Wallst/London mafia goons are finally arrested for War Crimes/Crimes Against Humanity, Treason for hiding behind the US Constitution to incite/engage in illegal wars/creating public panic/disorder & they being a public menace, I hope like heck they are read their Miranda Rights because the general public needs to see those perps receive a fair trial to help re-enforce public confidence in “We the People”s govt.

IE: Preamble of the Bill of Rights.

Evidence in court rooms have shown time & again there was in fact multiple conspiracies & not a conspiracy theory, that they have repeatedly been the ring leaders of events like Boston.

Boston, Sandy Hook,etc., all the evidence isn’t in yet so we’ll have to wait & see on those.

**

(What, you don’t think evil aholes wouldn’t pull a Boston to cover up the release of the below report? Really?)

The report is an indictment not only of President Bush who is responsible for the torture program but President Obama who promised CIA officials that they would not be investigated or prosecuted for torture.

The OIG needs to send a team to Boston and the DOJ and the FBI need to be taken to task. This was an unquestionable set up. The Massachusetts FBI are KNOWN liars and have decades of dishonest history – does “Bulger” ring a bell and the fact that it takes them 17 years to capture someone who had the same apartment for 16 when chances of their implication exist. Further, at the initial press conference where these suspects had their pictures released never was it disclosed that the FBI had been watching the older brother for years with no signs of terrorist activity noted. What was really interesting was the solicitation of pIcs and videos to the FBI email when in 2011 this same office was sent attachments as evidence of public corruption and returned an email stating they could not accept attachments for security reasons– PER SEVEN OTHER MAJOR CITY FBI AGENCIES THE EMAIL CONTACT ON THE INDIVIDUAL FBI SITES WAS SET UP SO THE PUBIC COULD SUBMIT TIPS AND RELATED EVIDENCE.

The supreme court has accepted the Public Safety exception to the Miranda warnings and in this is and incident in which it could be articulated as a fair use of it.

The facts that are undisputed presently are that the suspects had engaged in a WMD terrorist act, car jacked a vehicle in order to obtain a cache of weapons (illegal explosive\destructive devices and firearms) which they then used to engage against other persons such as LEOs attempting to capture them. There were multiple bombings that had occurred.

Other known probabilities with regard to terrorist cells is that they tend to have the support of others who may levy new attacks that are clearly and presently dangerous to the public. There also might be secondary explosive devices that could have been planted elsewhere, and this was certainly a possibility given that multiple bombs were detonated and there is experience with placing booby-trap type devices that could subject LEOs and the public to additional injury.

The scope of the questioning under Public Safety exception needs to be limited to addressing the general public safety and not minor issues that would be subject to Miranda.

Additionally, given the exigency that existed at the time, calling in large numbers of LEOs is reasonable. Taking a perimeter takes a lot of warm bodies to maintain, not to mention ones where the suspect was accused of engaging in bombings, shootings, multimple murders, car jackings, etc. The requirement of large numbers of personnel causes just about everyone under the sun to be called in. I have had countless times in my LE career where just about every agency available was called in to help, including Liquor Control officers, Railroad Police, Fish and Wildlife, anybody that could help during a high incident. It is not indicative of a police state in doing this especially when the numbers of these types of responses pales in comparison for the sheer numbers of common crimes that take less of a federal response.

The situation in this case is about stopping a undeniably severe threat to the lives of everyone around. I would want just as strong of a response to this as possible to prevent the escape of this person and another act happening with more people dying or being maimed. If handing out a blank check to all the overtime needed to put this situation to an end immediately is something most cities are going to agree to willingly.

Also, the fact that the citizen found the man hiding in his boat shows that even with the tightest perimeter imaginable one cannot expect every possible inch of space to be covered. It is not unusual for people to pop up and be discovered by others. Also, that the citizen immediately recognized this person to be the suspect certainly can be said to have been a successful example of getting the information out that the supect was on the loose rather than this man not knowing what what was going on because he was not watching the news or that nobody had contacted him about the threat.

To not have police and federal LEAs capable of being readily mustered just because one does not want to provide the appearance of a police state, even if just in appearance, denies the ability to handle a situation that can be very dangerous to patrol officers and the public in general. Plus the unavailability means that it is only going to be a matter of time before some high incident such as this arrives where the police are totally outgunned and a marauding group of terrorists unleashes additional murders against the public. At some point the situation will have to addressed by someone, leaving only one entity with the capability to do this; the military. Would that be preferrable? That is all that is left.

If we look at the number of terrorist acts on US soil since 9/11 it is a small sampling to consider this being evidence of a shift toward a police state.

As for the grandstanding by the gov’t officials I agree with you on that and of the choice of the US attorney who is fairly controversial is not something I would risk for the justice department in such a high profile case.

I also predict that at some point as you and someone else has mentioned there will be politicians that will use this incident as evidence to support some usurping of the consitition on other matters new and contrived. And you and I are in complete agreement with that.

“Alex Jones must be either getting lazy or think his readers are really dumb, because his grand theory about the Boston Marathon bombings is the sloppiest concocted narrative we’ve seen since that dog ate your homework.

Of course, Jones and his comrades at InfoWars thinks the brothers suspected in the bombing are innocent, citing such reliable sources as Twitter user “Trippin No L’ 4/20.”

But if the brothers Tsarnaev didn’t do it, who did? Jones laid out his unified theory of the event yesterday in a video promising “PROOF!” that the event was “staged” and an accompanying blog post.

The basic outline is the same as all of his projects: A globalist cabal working through the U.S. government staged a “false flag” operation that will be blamed on terrorists as pretext to take away guns and civil liberties and eventually tyranny. Eventually, they will depopulate the entire planet through massive genocides.

In the video, Jones calls the bombings “the biggest event” of his 18 years of broadcasting, so you would think he would bring his A game, but he really let us down with this one. There’s something you have to respect about a good conspiracy theory — Hollywood certainly does — and Jones is generally a master, but his latest work is so full of holes, internal inconsistencies and outrageous leaps in logic that only die-hard fans willing to suspend all disbelief will appreciate it. It’s really the Phantom Menace of the InfoWars franchise.” from the article above.

2) The heavy tactical response was justified…..he was ‘not some bloody kid’ who was cornered, he was a previously heavily armed terrorist who was still likely armed and possession of more explosives …..I doubt the author would have volunteered to saunter up Andy Griffith style like he seems to suggest LEOs do and put his hand on his shoulder and ask if he was ready to surrender……..such an operation requires layers of perimeters and extensive manpower to pull off safely.

3) The public safety exception to Miranda and detention is more troubling and I’m inclined to agree with the author.

Thank you Mike for the much needed bullshit repellent regarding this Boston Marathon thing.

I’m not only sick, but angry at the media and government continually milking this for personal gain.

How is the Boston bombing more tragic than the disaster in West Texas? What does the American flag have to do with capturing a criminal deviant? Why is it that the federal government is always the first to spout tripe like “we will not let the terrorists win.” Win what? The only people taking away our freedoms are the people in the Fed who leverage the fear created by acts and threats of terrorism to their advantage. John McCain and Lindsay Graham are actually calling for treating the suspect as an enemy combatant. WTF??

Where is this great psychological trauma that the media and federal government keeps talking about? How is it worse than what’s happening in West Texas?

I’m so sick of the pissing and the moaning amplified and exaggerated by those who have the most to gain; the media selling it and the folks in government leveraging it for unconstitutional purposes.

This is how you build a nation full of chicken shit pansies willing to give up their rights in alleged defense against irrational fear.

Now, the cheers for this erosion of Miranda are led not by right-wing Supreme Court justices such as William Rehnquist (who wrote the opinion in Quarles), but by MSNBC pundits like former Obama campaign media aide Joy Reid, who – immediately upon the DOJ’s announcement – instantly became a newly minted Miranda expert in order to loudly defend the DOJ’s actions. MSNBC’s featured “terrorism expert” Roger Cressey – who, unbeknownst to MSNBC viewers, is actually an executive with the intelligence contractor Booz Allen – also praised the DOJ’s decision not to Mirandize the accused bomber (if you want instant, reflexive support for the US government’s police and military powers, MSNBC is the place to turn these days).

Leave aside how misleading and misinformed this defense is: the DOJ’s policy, as documented, is to go well beyond that 1984 “public safety” exception and the DOJ clearly intends to do so here. It’s just so telling how this doctrine, in the age of Obama, has been transformed from hated right-wing assault on Miranda rights to something liberals now celebrate and defend even in its warped and expanded version as embraced by the Obama DOJ. Just 30 years ago, Quarles was viewed as William Rehnquist’s pernicious first blow against Miranda; now, it’s heralded by MSNBC Democrats as good, just and necessary for our safety, even in its new extremist rendition. That’s the process by which long-standing liberal views of basic civil liberties, as well core Constitutional guarantees, continue to be diluted under President Obama in the name of terrorism. Just compare the scathing denunciation of this Miranda exception by Marshall, Brennan and Stevens to the MSNBC cheers for it in its enlarged form.

Needless to say, Tsarnaev is probably the single most hated figure in America now. As a result, as Bazelon noted, not many people will care what is done to him, just like few people care what happens to the accused terrorists at Guantanamo, or Bagram, or in Yemen and Pakistan. But that’s always how rights are abridged: by targeting the most marginalized group or most hated individual in the first instance, based on the expectation that nobody will object because of how marginalized or hated they are. Once those rights violations are acquiesced to in the first instance, then they become institutionalized forever, and there is no basis for objecting once they are applied to others, as they inevitably will be (in the case of the War on Terror powers: as they already are being applied to others).
…

Leave aside the fact that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has been convicted of nothing and is thus entitled to a presumption of innocence. The reason to care what happens to him is because how he is treated creates precedent for what the US government is empowered to do, including to US citizens on US soil. When you cheer for the erosion of his rights, you’re cheering for the erosion of your own.

Sens. Lindsey Graham and John McCain were quick out of the box last night in declaring that the Obama administration should hold Dzhokar Tsarnaev in military detention:

Now that the suspect is in custody, the last thing we should want is for him to remain silent. It is absolutely vital the suspect be questioned for intelligence gathering purposes. We need to know about any possible future attacks which could take additional American lives. The least of our worries is a criminal trial which will likely be held years from now.

Under the Law of War we can hold this suspect as a potential enemy combatant not entitled to Miranda warnings or the appointment of counsel. Our goal at this critical juncture should be to gather intelligence and protect our nation from further attacks.

We remain under threat from radical Islam and we hope the Obama Administration will seriously consider the enemy combatant option.

We will stand behind the Administration if they decide to hold this suspect as an enemy combatant.

Bobby quickly explained why this is both unnecessary and a bad idea; this very fine Wall Street Journal blog sketches out why it would pose legal problems as well. But the idea has had legs on Twitter, so I want to bring together in one place and explain the several distinct but overlapping reasons why it would be not merely ill-advised but absolutely nuts to try to treat Tsarnaev as an enemy combatant.

Broadly speaking, there are four reasons:

First and most important, Tsarnaev may not be an enemy combatant. Graham and McCain warn that “The accused perpetrators of these acts were not common criminals attempting to profit from a criminal enterprise, but terrorist trying to injure, maim, and kill innocent Americans.” That’s certainly true. But not every terrorist with a bomb is an enemy combatant whose military detention is authorized by law. Some are just killers with bombs. Under the AUMF as interpreted by the courts, and under the NDAA as passed by Congress, the administration is authorized to hold in military detention only those who are “part of” or “substantially supporting” Al Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces. Nothing that has come to light publicly has shown that Tsarnaev was operating as part of any group covered by the AUMF. Unless and until such evidence arises, military detention is not merely a bad idea. It is simply not legally available. Particularly for those of us who support military detention in appropriate circumstances and have argued for its propriety and legality, it is absolutely essential to reject it where the facts do not support it. Military detention does not flow legally from the fact of someone’s being more than just a common criminal. It flows from the fact of someone’s being a part of a military enemy’s fighting cadre. Calling for detention of people who don’t meet—or may not meet—that threshold comes perilously close to calling for a roving power to lock up nasty people.

Second, assuming for a moment that the facts as they emerge would support an enemy combatant designation, there’s the small matter of Tsarnaev’s citizenship. Tsarnaev is reportedly a naturalized American citizen, and the government’s appetite for the detention of American citizens under the laws of war has waned—and rightly so. This began under the Bush administration, which tried twice—in the early cases of Yaser Hamdi and Jose Padilla—to detain U.S. citizens under the laws of war and ultimately backed down both times. The question of whether such detention is legally appropriate for a U.S. citizen captured by law enforcement remains an open one. But it’s an open question that no sane executive would want to test in the presence of a viable alternative—like, say, an open-and-shut prosecution in federal court. As a matter of policy, it was informally off the table long ago, and the Obama administration made that informal policy formal. John Brennan, in a speech at Harvard Law School, declared:

when it comes to U.S. citizens involved in terrorist-related activity, whether they are captured overseas or at home, we will prosecute them in our criminal justice system. There is bipartisan agreement that U.S. citizens should not be tried by military commission.

Third, even if the reports of Tsarnaev’s citizenship prove erroneous, he was certainly captured in the United States, and the military detention of domestic captures is problematic for many of the same reasons that the detention of the citizen poses difficulties. Again, whether it is or is not legally available is an open question of law; this was the issue in the Al Marri case. But this is not a question of law that any administration should be eager to test. And just as it has adopted a policy of not testing the citizen detention question, the Obama administration has taken military detention off the table for domestic captures. As Brennan put it,

it is the firm position of the Obama Administration that suspected terrorists arrested inside the United States will—in keeping with long-standing tradition—be processed through our Article III courts. As they should be. Our military does not patrol our streets or enforce our laws—nor should it.

Fourth, even if all of these legal and policy problems could be overcome, as Bobby explained last night, military detention offers no clear advantages in this case and has several big disadvantages. The public safety exception to Miranda means the FBI has a considerable degree of flexibility in conducting this interrogation, so there’s no particular reason to expect the Bureau will be unable to glean from Tsarnaev the answers to the critical questions at stake right now: Are there accomplices still at large, and to what extent was the bombing the work of any foreign group? On the other hand, military detention would gravely complicate the longer-term interest in punishment and in Tsarnaev’s legitimate long-term incarceration. In the Hamdi and Padilla and Al Marri cases, the consequence of military detention was a substantially shorter sentence than the suspect’s conduct would have supported.

In short, there is simply no case for military detention here. By pushing for it, Sens. Graham and McCain risk bringing into disrepute the one avenue realistically open to those who want answers.

OKY1, I’m in agreement w/ you on Waco. We disagree on Boston. I think the important thing to know regarding Boston is who objects or have objected to the police presence. I’ve seen numerous people in Watertown[I know that area well..they’re not afraid to say what they think!] and they have all been grateful. That may change..I’ll watch for those affected who say they felt violated. It’s easy for us to talk about it since we were all safe. Those folks were not. It’s the same w/ 9/11. For the most part, people in NYC have a different attitude. They felt the horror. They went to many funerals. This isn’t black and white like Waco IMHO. There, Clinton wanted to show his “manhood” and then hid behind Janet Reno’s skirt when the shit hit the fan.

(Aaronson’s book: The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism

“A groundbreaking work of investigative journalism, The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on Terrorism exposes how the FBI has, under the guise of engaging in counterterrorism since 9/11, built a network of more than 15,000 informants whose primary purpose is to infiltrate Muslim communities to create and facilitate phony terrorist plots so that the Bureau can then claim it is winning the war on terror.

An outgrowth of Trevor Aaronson’s work as an investigative reporting fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, which culminated in an award-winning cover story in Mother Jones magazine, The Terror Factory reveals shocking information about the criminals, con men, and liars the FBI uses as paid informants–including the story of an accused murderer who has become one of the Bureau’s most prolific terrorism snitches–as well as documenting the extreme methods the FBI uses to ensnare Muslims in terrorist plots, which are in reality conceived and financed by the FBI.

The book also offers unprecedented detail into how the FBI has transformed from a reactive law enforcement agency to a proactive counterterrorism organization that traps hapless individuals in manufactured terrorist plots in order to justify the $3 billion it spends every year fighting terrorism.” -Amazon.com description)

It stuns me that the writer expresses this young man as guilty. The FBi had their sites set on these brothers 3 years ago, because they can.. The FBI can’t go on without creating bad guys for public consumption even it means they have to set them up. They have a lot of history in this stuff. Where’s the evidence? The govt doesn’t have enough power that they refuse the suspect his Miranda rights? Did we have near enough legions of various policing/military agents swarming around at the end in their lurid lust to be part of the alarming display of street terror known as our “police?” How can this person possibly get a fair trail? When will we begin to have real journalism that really reports what is going on here. Will anyone ever ask about actual evidence? This habitual rush to judgment in the media is MORE SCARY than the firepower onslaught with which the public was titillated.

Well, rick — did the articles help you to realize that what happened in Boston was an inside job, but you just can’t bring yourself to acknowledge it, or is it more likely the case that new evidence is not going to change your already made-up mind?

“I’m not only sick, but angry at the media and government continually milking this for personal gain.”

Bob,

Thank you for a cogent rant that puts this all in perspective, especially your mention of the disaster in West Texas. You summed up my feelings about the media in this instance better than I did in the blog and I appreciate it.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/04/19/1203241/-The-wonder-of-libertarian-zoning-laws-West-Texas-edition We often stopped in West Texas on the way to Austin. it is a little town whose residents are primarily of Czech descent but now includes some hispanics., They have Czech bakeries and restaurants which are kind of unique in Texas. We were struck by the poverty of the town with the big fertilizer plant. Little did we know that the owners of the plant were not in compliance with the laws and zoning did not exist. But then again, it is Texas, and the governor that wants to eliminate the EPA and secede is now begging for federal aid.

Alex Jones is a modern day Astrologer. He is smart enough to map the movement of the stars. Clever enough to create mildly plausible reasons for their movements. And he has an audience eager to believe snake oil logic.
Astrology (Astronomy) based on science, originally concerned the movement and predictions of the stars.
Sadly it morphed into explaining the ills, good fortune, triumphs and tragedy of Kings and common folk.
Having faith in Alex Jones “predictions and explanations” is believing logic pattern A then ignoring all the other logic patterns (b,c,d,etc) till one jumps on conclusion Z. Alex makes sense if you ignore and willfully discredit an alphabet of reasons logic & truths, that counter and prove wrong this modern day Astrologer.
Faith in religion, astrology, spaghetti monsters and stars, to divine reasons for events tragic or triumphant, has been a cohesive and uniting force common among all of emerging human civilization. Faith in the divine has helped humans step up from the mud of animal instinct and emotion.
Humans have (in increasingly more experience) risen above survival of the fittest. We care for the elderly, instead of leaving them in the bushes when they can’t keep with the herd. The sick and injured can now be nurtured back to health. We have the ability to educate others and raise their understandings and awareness of life and its’ fulfillment.
Our current evolutionary stage is democratic government. Organized for the benefit of the greater and common good.
Faith in government is challenging….to say the least. Our constitution quite possibly is the greatest achievement of humankind.
God did not write it, Stars did not write it, nor Zeus or Spaghetti monsters. We the people did. We the people hold the responsibility to uphold it, follow it, and balance the equality for all proclaimed in it.

We are the government :
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.”

We have a revolution every two and four years in this country at the voting booth. Sadly the revolutionaries of today demand artificially flavored meme water, juvenile ego massages, and mashed potato mind numbing flash bang idiot box entertainment.
….. The fault my fellow Americans is ours. This government is ours. The responsibility is ours. We get what we deserve.

Regarding the search. I know all the lawyers here know this, but this may help explain to others what was happening, with the drama removed.

The section of the law which provides a loophole in the Fourth Amendment is called “exigent circumstances.” Case law and a couple of excerpts here.

People v. Ramey, 545 P.2d 1333,1341 (Cal. 1976)

An emergency situation requiring swift action to prevent imminent danger to life or serious damage to property, or to forestall the imminent escape of a suspect, or destruction of evidence. There is no ready litmus test for determining whether such circumstances exist, and in each case the extraordinary situation must be measured by the facts known by officials.

United States v. McConney, 728 F. 2d 1195, 1199

Those circumstances that would cause a reasonable person to believe that entry (or other relevant prompt action) was necessary to prevent physical harm to the officers or other persons, the destruction of relevant evidence, the escape of a suspect, or some other consequence improperly frustrating legitimate law enforcement efforts.

In the manhunt case, it is standard practice to establish as tight a perimeter as possible, and to conduct house to house searches under what is called a “Ramey Warrant.” I have participated in the same kind of searches when we were looking for lost kids on a mountain. That particular mountain has a 150 square mile footprint, and a few dozen houses, mostly vacation homes, on that side of the mountain. One kid was autistic. It had been a warm day so he was wearing only shorts and a t-shirt when he vanished. It was March in the mountains, where temps drop to well below freezing at night; not to mention a ten year old kid is not at the top of the food chain up here. We searched houses, storage sheds, barns, and anyplace else a scared kid might hide or even be captured by a two-legged predator. The search team did not worry about any legal fallout–take care of that later. We found him alive about 10:00 the next morning. He was hiding under a pile of brush in a ravine at the 5,500 foot level. Cold to the point of hypothermia, and hungry, but OK. It was a good day.

My concern is not about the way the search was conducted. It appears a good protocol was used, and it got the desired results. However, I have concern about the the fallout from this in days and weeks to come. We are back to “shock doctrine” tactics from lawmakers and the judiciary.

OS, Thank you for your wisdom and sanity. I don’t believe anyone pontificating here is from Boston. I’m from those parts, got 2 siblings who live in the area. They are not pushovers and just as tough as NYer’s but not as assh@leish. They don’t only agree w/ the search, they are expressing gratitude. It’s easy to be tough from your mother’s basement!

“Our constitution quite possibly is the greatest achievement of humankind.”

It goes without saying that we have a written constitution against the odds, and perhaps because in due part to the Atlantic Ocean between Old Europe and the New World. Written constitutions just don’t come easy in history, and we need to preserve it against the very same tendencies that kept it from history in the first place: Absolute power and domination over others for private gain through tyranny and total coercive constraints. .

Don’t blame the public when it is a consortium of private people; but point your finger at these very precise people that have taken on the mantle of supremacy as freedom and liberty as the right to dominate and are dismantling history with our constitution. Faith in government is a path dependent fallacy. Trust is one that can be tested; blind faith is for true believers …the target population for deceivers. And Deception is the name of the zero sum game these days.

As Otteray Scribe so wisely pointed out;
“We are back to “shock doctrine” tactics from lawmakers and the judiciary.”

Excerpt:
WATERTOWN, Ma. — The last of a long day’s true absurdities came a little before nine on Friday night. Police cars of every description and size were piling back down Mt. Auburn Street and up towards the Massachusetts Turnpike, whence many of them would depart for dozens of other towns in and around the state. In the distance behind them, cheering arose, and there was a great honking of horns, and as I crossed the bridge over the Charles, a man walked up to me, pinwheels for eyes, and said, “Hey, man. Got any weed?

I stopped and began to laugh. “Are you kidding me?” I asked him. “There are approximately 300,000 cops within four blocks of us right now and you’re trying to score?” I laughed again, and he looked sad, and wandered off through Watertown Square in the general direction of the rising applause.

It was a day that began with a guy coming home from work and wandering into a firefight. It was a day that ended with another guy coming home from a day beside the ocean and wandering into another one. It was a day on unearthly quiet along the wooded paths along the river. It was a day of rumors and doubt, and heavy weaponry around the Target and the Best Buy. It was a day of sheltering in place. It was a day in which the essential geography of my life — “Hey, there’s the place where I blog every day!” — turned into a place of dark corners and of rustling in the underbrush. And it ended with cheers rising from an old cemetery where buried are some of the casualties from Bunker Hill.

It was a day in which the governor and law enforcement officials called a very solemn press conference to announce that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, having bafflingly escaped both a high-speed pursuit and a legitimate running gun battle the night before, might very well be in the wind, but that they were lifting the shelter-in-place order and allowing the citizens of Watertown, and Newton, and the adjoining communities to leave their homes again. And then, not 20 minutes later, police cruisers on both sides of the river were executing cop-movie U-turns, and a police helicopter was stationed above a stretch of Mt. Auburn Street, and there were gunshots again, and people soon were gathering in an old cemetery in the dark and the day itself already was filled with ghosts.

Donohue’s is an Irish pub on Bigelow Street just up behind the Watertown Mall. (I once played pub trivia there when it was under different management and had a different name, which I can’t remember right now.) Late as Thursday night became Friday morning, John Donohue was closing up, and he was watching the television set with increasing alarm. Somebody had shot an MIT police officer to death. Somebody had knocked over a convenience store. After what had happened at the Boston Marathon on Monday, Donohue wondered what the hell was going on around him these days. He decided to go home early. He got in his car and drove up toward Mt. Auburn Street. He turned right. He found himself in the middle of war zone. The Tsarnaev brothers had come home.

“It was a crazy, surreal scene,” Donohue said. “I turned the car and I ended up in the middle of this melee. There were shots flying everywhere and I heard two very loud explosions, and then a third one.” Donohue tried to go back to his restaurant, but a State Police officer stopped him. “Get the fuck out of here,’ the officer explained, “Right fucking now.”

OS, Thank you for your wisdom and sanity. I don’t believe anyone pontificating here is from Boston. I’m from those parts, got 2 siblings who live in the area. They are not pushovers and just as tough as NYer’s but not as assh@leish. They don’t only agree w/ the search, they are expressing gratitude. It’s easy to be tough from your mother’s basement!

Oky1 1, April 21, 2013 at 1:08 am

Remember the movie …
=======================================================
Oky1, that is some very good pontificating. Bravo.

Dredd: Sympathies are not in question here, nor empathy. The political and juristic ramifications on victims here include the rest of us until we determine that the ripples of reactionary fervor do not facilitate an instrumental opportunity for a blind trust of power elements that legitimize and justify military society in America. The questions being raised by this article are necessary “due diligence” in protecting every American and the future of American constitutional democracy. We are not just “stakeholders” in this effort…, as citizens we are actually “shareholders” in this political-military restraint.

The author makes a critical assessment that has profound impact on the consequences of this tragedy we are enduring:

“Now, thus far, I’m actually not that worked up about Miranda rights (though I may get there soon). As Orin Kerr explains, the public safety exception is a legally recognized law, and Miranda itself only limits what can be admitted as testimony against Dzhokhar in his trial (I’m betting he’ll plead guilty in any case). The government appears to have so much evidence against him in any case, any confession he makes will likely not be necessary to convict him.
“Mind you, as Charlie Savage reported two years ago, the government has been institutionalizing longer delays before they give Miranda warnings, most notably with people they (or foreign proxies) interrogate overseas first, followed by a clean team Mirandized interrogation. And as the reference to “gain[ing] critical intelligence” above suggests, the Obama Administration is stretching the intent of pre-Miranda interrogations to include more substantive interrogation (update: Emily Bazelon also made this point).”

Now in regard to this article. and not only Marshall law or rule being rehearsed under the guise of a law enforcement manhunt, but the ongoing insidious “militarization” of our society. Many of the suspicious legislations that deregulated the markets have their counterpart in neutralizing the constitutional rights of Americans (in situ). The profile here is to test ground overseas on foreign soils unprotected by our written constitutional constraints and then (rationalize) provide “justifications” to “legitimate” these exceptions under crisis driven reactionary fervor. It is an insidious process, but one that perhaps “Suharto” inspires rather than our own Kennedy “sunrise” of past enlightenment days (…sorry if that is a bit obscure…others will understand…). The points are enhanced by the fact that one entire “generation” of Americans have now served in the military and perhaps have been exposed to the deployed atrocities overseas, and are more acclimatized to such rationalizations that “ration” rights proportionately. So perhaps your personal concerns might be more perplexing then the physical assault on one of our beloved cities and the people directly exposed. But what you must fathom is the implications that have damaged us all and our children and our Nation if the end result of our “understandings” result in tyranny over justice and the end of American inspiration to the end of the world. Are we regressing to the Iron rule of Oligarchy and militaristic regimentation as in history, or do we stand and transcend these transgressions from all quarters of power abuse as our heritage demands?

I truly sympathize with your feelings, but believe me…feelings are easy to manipulate in the heat of arguments and discernment.

Dredd, Let’s just discuss how the people who were most affected reacted to the lockdown and search. I’m very serious, have you seen anyone in Boston complaining. I’m sure there are some. I’ve looked on websites most likely to write about them but haven’t found any to date.Can we agree people most hurt see this differently than us sitting in our living room[mother’s basement was a bit over the line..I admit].

I am deeply concerned. I do believe it was “way more”, than was necessary. Certainly, the thought that the case “may have” been solved brings relief for the residents of Boston. As far as I know, this country is still “innocent; until proven guilty” but our media-driven, internet-connected age does not honor that code – remember Richard Jewell ? – who’s heroism led him to become the prime suspect, in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, until they caught Eric Rudolph, a Christian extremist protesting abortion, by maiming innocent people attending a public event. I am deeply saddened that such things happen; but I worry as much, about the erosion of my freedom to life, liberty & the pursuit of happiness.

I live less than twenty miles from Boston. When my husband and I were watching TV Friday morning and heard about the events of Thursday evening and Friday morning and about the lockdown/closing of certain communities near Boston, we discussed whether or not it was a good decision.The first thing that came to my mind was the young kids who’d be walking to and from school on Friday. It would have been another tragedy had a child/some children gotten caught in a crossfire…had a grenade thrown at them…been run over during a high-speed chase. I think I would have kept my child home from school and off the streets that day if I lived in Watertown.

I guess on April 19, 1775 & again on July 4, 1776 the people of the Boston area, John Adams, Jefferson, Madison & the boys should have turned over their rifles, gun powder & cannons & got down on their knees & licked the horse crap off the mentally ill King George 3rd’s Red Coats boots.

Geezzzz, what the heck is wrong with some of you? Are you on Dope?

If you are you need to get some different stuff because the rest are not buying into your Commie Nazi Fascist Crap.

What just has been happening in Boston by “Bad Guys” got inside our Govt is unacceptable.

Legal action needs to be bought against them & have them immediately removed from positions of power.

(Obama, Holder, DHS, TSA…& they can dragnet the Bush/Clintons & their crews while were at it.)

If you love the Commie/Nazi crap do the rest of us a favor crawl out from hiding under your blankets, shaking in fear & move to England/North Korea, Mexico, but get the heck off our block.

(Geezz, How do I add , I respectfully submit to you that willfully Aid & Abet to False Flag Terrorism? Sorry, it ain’t happening!)

“There Is Something Greater Then Fear” people, grow a pair & get up off your begging helpless knees.

From the looks of it some of you didn’t bother looking at that movie & how OKC bombing is directly related to events like Boston that I posted above: A Noble Lie.

Below are some pictures that are in that movie of what it govt sponsored torture/terrorism looks like in the USA with Miranda Rights:

I’m glad you posted about the sheltering in place for I agree that that was a wise move on the city’s part. I am wondering though, and since you do live so close to the area, it is conceivable that the suspects could have gone 20 miles before being spotted and the shoot-out and subsequent escape of #2 on foot could have happened in your neck of the woods … other than perhaps inveigling a couple policemen to help you with your packing ( ;) ), how would you have felt about a house to house search?

I ask because I’m so far away and only watching on T.V. and find my imagination limited by those two factors.

Dredd, Let’s just discuss how the people who were most affected reacted to the lockdown and search. I’m very serious, have you seen anyone in Boston complaining. I’m sure there are some. I’ve looked on websites most likely to write about them but haven’t found any to date.Can we agree people most hurt see this differently than us sitting in our living room[mother’s basement was a bit over the line..I admit].=========================================
We are all Bostonians, and they are all Americans.

Even if an entire state such as Texas wants to secede, or a bunch of southern states want what is not American, I will resist them no matter what, until they are gone or I am gone.

The good people of Germany, and I do mean good people, became seduced by strong, strong (did I mention strong?) propaganda.

Except for many that did not, like Oskar.

I am a follower of Oskar Schindler (“Schlinder’s List”).

My kind of hero.

The gestapo pigs do not impress me, whether they have on robes, wear jack boots, or have diarrhea mouth.

Anything can happen. I doubt, however, that “#2″ would have fled/been able to flee on foot to my neck of the woods. It would have been quite a trek for him. Still, the drive into Boston from where I live when traffic is especially heavy might take longer than traveling by foot.

They had bombs and were suicidal, that makes them quite different than other killers.
========================================
Oh, so the bad killers, who we should lock-down in Pavlovian response, when they kill, and the bad killers who we should not.

Or vice versa?

The first time an American city went in lock down because of a near-dead wounded kid … but the gestapo looking bad actors never found?

The 19 year old kid who forty gazillion red necks could not find?

Who one citizen found after they all went to the dognut shop to watch themselves save American on TV.

How would I feel about a house to house search? I’m not sure. I heard someone on TV talk about his house being searched. I guess police looked in rooms and closets–but not through cabinets, etc. I think if police made a mess of my house and weren’t respectful, I’d be upset. If I thought one of the bombers might be in my neighborhood, I might be thankful the area was being carefully searched. I think it’s hard to know how you’d react until you are actually faced with a situation like that.

Mike wrote:
“It was ironic in the end, that the suspect was eventually located as a direct result of the “shutdown” being lifted, by a man who came out of his house, noticed blood on the tarp of his boat and peeked in to see the suspect covered in blood.”

Oh well, they do all seem grateful in Boston and I’ve listened carefully to the interviews and watched the videos that many of them took while their homes were being searched … I guess I’d have to go along with it if it were to happen here though I do wonder how the 4 year old would react … not to mention my neighbor’s German Shepherds.

BTW … those poor souls down in Texas, 14 dead, 200 injured, and still some missing.

If you’ll recall Genes thread on here about the 100 mile rule…. DHS coulda done what the unified forces did without fear of reprisal….. Well maybe reprisal…. But clearly within there authority….

That is one of the main reasons I am against a Federal Firearm Regulation… Leave it up to each state to determine what’s appropriate…. Once the mouse gets under the door…. It’s capable of having babies…. That’s why I’m opposed to even one mouse in the house…. Look what Bush did to the Constitution and Obama is doing this very instance…

Now for the fine job the response team did… I am greatful….just as I am for the fine job the locals did in West, Texas….. Because it could not be classified anything other than an industrial accident and not within 100 miles of the US border I would be opposed to a SWAT taking command…. But I believe that if they, The ATF and E….could have gotten in somehow they would have….

Why would anyone believe Obama/Bush/Clinton & their associated mafia type goon forces hate the total concept of the founders of the USA & why would many in this current generation of leaders sponsor groups like Al CIAda & likely are bad actors at the Boston area events of late?

Looking at things from a different angle you can see they are looking for heavy cover for their criminal friends running the Transnational Wallst/London Banks.

They don’t give a dam about the rest of us or our families.

I personally trust the info I receive from Greg, Paul & Bill that I post below here.

Blouise, I don’t see a Thelma and Louise moment in you women, even though SWM is in Texas. I would never call her a “Texan” because that’s tantamount to an expletive for her, and I respect her dislike for where she resides.

When Elaine said, “I’m still packing” I first thought she meant she had a gun! That would have knocked me off my chair. Books makes much more sense===============================
Stop messing with the NRA and you too can carry books.

Dredd, I’m too f@ckn’ old to be “horny” for anything. And, I have NEVER been horny for war. I’m a Viet Nam aged boomer who was blessed w/ a 352 draft number. I would have been drafted only if we went to war w/ the Soviet Union. Relax, just because I disagree w/ your take on the search in Boston doesn’t mean you need to demonize me. There are many here who abide what was done. And, as stated previously, apparently few, if any, Bostonians have a problem w/ what was done. When you compare Boston to Texas you shoot yourself in the foot…as it were.

nick, I agree with you that the majority of the people in Boston approved. I have cousins there and my daughter’s best friend lives in Cambridge only a few blocks from where the kids lived. She said did not want to go out as long as they were roaming around. I have said I like Austin, and San Antonio is definitely on the upswing.

I’m sure most of the people in Boston feel grateful, but their gratitude is not the point. Many no doubt enjoyed having a day off, but you don’t close down an entire major City over one thug supposedly trapped in a “perimeter” in a small section of a metropolis.

Excerpt:
The Tsarnaev brothers suspected in the deadly Boston Marathon bombings were carrying homemade bombs and grenades, which they lobbed at police when cornered, the city’s police commissioner said. He added that the suspects had planned further attacks.

“We have reason to believe, based upon the evidence that was found at that scene – the explosions, the explosive ordinance that was unexploded and the firepower that they had – that they were going to attack other individuals,” Commissioner Edward Davis told CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday.

“That’s my personal belief at this time,” he continued.

He said that more than 250 spent rounds of ammunition were found at the scene, and that the ground was “littered with unexploded improvised explosive devices that we had to point out to the arriving officers”.

Another device was found inside a vehicle the brothers had previously carjacked.

Excerpt:
The two bombing suspects were chased into Watertown following the fatal shooting of an MIT Police officer and the carjacking of another person.

The carjack victim said the brothers told him they were the Boston Marathon bombers.

During the pursuit, grenades and other explosives were thrown from car by the suspects and gunfire was exchanged in the area of Dexter and Laurel streets.

“A bomb went off with a huge cloud of smoke, with another bomb and then it was even more chaos on the corner where they kept firing. And there was a black Mercedes SUV that stormed through the corner and hit a police cruiser. And right after that occurred, I saw a police officer, he had his foot on the dead suspect with the gun pointed at him,” said Mike Julakis, who lives on Dexter Avenue in Watertown.

Doctors at Beth Israel-Deaconess Medical Center, while not confirming they treated the bombing suspect, said the man, who was pronounced dead at 1:35 a.m., had blast wounds.

During the pursuit, MBTA Police officer Richard Donohue, 33, was shot and taken to Mount Auburn Hospital in critical condition. Tamerlan Tsarnaev, known as Marathon bombing suspect No. 1, was killed.

“I can confirm that a Transit Police officer was wounded. He is being treated at this hour at a local hospital,” said spokesman Joe Pesaturo. The officer has been on the force for three years and is married with a 6-month-old child.

Quite interesting! Ironic the suspect is being treated @ Beth Israel Hospital. There are hospitals affiliated w/ vistually all major faiths. However, I know of no Muslim hospitals in the U.S. Does anyone here know of one?

Excerpt:
Dr. David Schoenfeld was reading on his couch when a fierce gunfight and explosions broke out near his Watertown home early Friday morning. Expecting massive casualties, he told his wife goodbye and bolted out the door to work at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Less than 10 minutes after arriving in the emergency department, he witnessed the aftermath of that battle.

At about 1:20 a.m., emergency medical personnel wheeled in Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, handcuffed, unconscious, and near death. His tattered clothes had already been cut away. More than a dozen police officers surrounded him.

Emergency crews were performing cardiopulmonary resuscitation on Tsarnaev, who had massive injuries, including burns on his right shoulder, bullet wounds, and a gaping slash on his torso.

Trauma teams had been alerted that one or more people injured in the gun battle, possibly a suspect or a police officer or both, were on the way, and they wore protective gowns and gloves. They checked Tsarnaev for radioactivity with a Geiger counter; none was detected.

“I don’t think people were worried for their safety,’’ Schoenfeld said. But “we knew this was not a normal night for trauma . . . we were waiting for the other shoe to drop.’’

Excerpt:
CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Doctors say the Boston transit police officer wounded in a shootout with the marathon bombing suspects had lost nearly all his blood and his heart had stopped from a single gunshot wound that severed three major blood vessels in his right thigh.

Surgeons at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge say 33-year-old Richard Donohue is in stable but critical condition. He is sedated and on a breathing machine but opened his eyes, moved his hands and feet and squeezed his wife’s hand Sunday.

Emergency workers started CPR on the scene to restart his heart. Doctors say he is expected to make a full recovery and that nerves and muscles in his leg are intact.

“…you don’t close down an entire major City over one thug…”
an abundance of precaution would be a gross underestimation of what was expended. Somewhere along the line we should see some financial figures for what business revenue was lost, wages unearned…and of course the final bill for the massive manpower and technical support including heavy vehicles expense and from reports I have seen at least 2 Black Hawk helicopters used over the swarm of para-military forces on the ground. These were visible during the day on some of the news coverage, and also the reports have them operating after dark as well along with “other” helicopters (we would expect). I don’t suppose we will ever get a full assessment that includes the Amtrak and Penn Station closings and other North East Coast costs (including overtime police duty).

One interesting item found on searching for further information about these operations is that apparently the Black Hawk helicopters have been doing maneuvers over Boston (and Miami & Los Angeles as well) for some time. At least 15+ were reported doing night maneuvers in August 2012. Another report stated that a Black Hawk helicopter landed on a Best Buy roof during the lockdown.

“WHAT’S IT COST TO
SHUT DOWN A CITY?”
[quoted]
“Much of the Boston area was on lockdown until early evening last Friday while authorities carried out a manhunt for Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the prime suspect in last Monday’s bombing of the Boston Marathon. The shutdown froze local commerce for most of the day, and carried a steep economic cost—somewhere between $250 and $333 million, according to an analyst at IHS Global Insight. The Boston metro area produces about $1 billion in economic activity per day, more than either Greece or Ireland, and while activities like buying groceries can be deferred until later, other commerce was simply lost (although Boston-founded Dunkin’ Donuts remained open during the search). Jim Diffley of IHS, however, expects Beantown’s economy to recover quickly: “Look back at New York City and Washington, D.C., after 9/11,” Diffley says. “Both were very fast-growing areas that quickly overcame [the attacks].”

but if I can’t get through my pro se appeal then Judge Bates’ finding that JABS isn’t confined to alleged criminal offenders then the feds will have more authority to forcibly photo and fingerprint the general population and put them in a data base keyed by social security number.

I was also really surprised that the USMS got my voter registration records going back to 1980 and put them into the Warrant Information Network system. I’m not making this up — they returned them to me under my records requests.

“While yahoos in other parts of the country imagined that Bostonians must long to take to the streets with guns to hunt our fugitive down, in reality, we would much rather let our competent police force do it. And they did.

They successfully captured Dzhokhar Tsarnaev alive – without a single civilian injury.

And it’s important, too, that Tsarnaev was taken alive. Many, many people in the city were praying for Tsarnaev’s life on Friday. We wanted justice and answers, not revenge, not a corpse. We want to hear why he did this obscene thing to us, to people we loved, on a day so many of us think of as the best day of the year.

The reason we love Marathon Day is because it gives us a chance to cheer for something simple and pure and good. We stand at the sidelines and cheer the names that the runners have taped to their shirts or written on their arms; we enter into a partnership between the ones who are running for no reason but to run, and the ones who are cheering for no reason but to love.

On Friday, when the words we were waiting for came – “conscious, alive, and captured” – the city burst out of doors. People lined the streets in Watertown, cheering and clapping the police as they rolled out of the neighborhood. On Beacon Street, a stream of whooping kids poured along the Marathon route, high-fiving strangers. It was the Marathon again. We were cheering for something very simple, something good.

There is no proof beyond a reasonable doubt that he committed these crimes. There is only circumstantial evidence; then, there is the dead brother. If he gets a good attorney, he could either walk or plead guilty to a far lesser crime. We should all thank the Feds screwing this one up (sarcasm)!